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The ‘backbone’ of the Serenissima: Venice and the trade with the Holy Roman... 623

Romagna would flow to Amsterdam and the Low Countries and vice
versa, like it had in former times via Venice and Tyrol. The current
situation with too much traffic on the other routes was to the great
disadvantage of the Bolzano fairs. In spring 1666, the emperor invited
delegates from the imperial cities of Frankfurt and Augsburg and the
Republic of Venice to a conference to be held in Bolzano in June, to
decide on measures to promote traffic through Tyrol. The conference,
which was attended by authorised delegates from Augsburg, Venice,
Verona, Upper Austria, and Bolzano explicitly noted the shift of long-
distance trade from the Netherlands to Italy to the Swiss and Grison
passes. A comprehensive package of measures taking action against
this was decided on. This included a kind of advertising campaign in
all trading centres in Italy and Germany for the Tyrolean routes. The
participants promised each other to improve the roads, to revise the
Rodordnung (the system of transportation over the Alps), to streamline
the formal procedures of customs clearances, to remedy grievances,
and to significantly reduce customs duties for a range of products,
especially raw silk, glassware, cotton, and spices. Transit duties for
wool and silk were again reduced by ¼ in Rovereto and Verona, as in
1656. The Venetian side was somewhat cautious here and demanded
longer renegotiations in Venice. These took place in 1667. The reason
for Venice’s reluctance was that the tariff reductions of 1656 had al-
legedly not been sufficiently respected by the Austrians. Therefore, sig-
nificant guarantees were now demanded. Only when the Austrian side
gave these did Venice adopt the agreement .
30
The Venetians obviously knew where their interests lay and how to
defend them during these long and protracted negotiations. This time,
the negotiations had not simply been a bilateral affair, but had instead
involved many different actors, and even the faraway city of Frankfurt
had charged the Augsburg delegate with the defence of its interests.
Within this complex web of actors, the Venetian side had also involved
a delegate from Verona this time. The only reason the negotiations had
become more difficult than in the 1650s, though, was the hard nego-
tiation position of the Venetian side, which had some unfortunate ex-
periences with the treaty of 1656 due to partial non-compliance on the
Tyrolian side.
This was not yet enough. North-South traffic still preferred the sea
routes, and the Venetian side consequently had to witness a weakening

30 J. Hartung, Eine Internationale Conferenz zur Wiederbelebung des italienisch-nie-
derländischen Transitverkehrs durch Süddeutschland und Tyrol, «Zeitschrift für Social-
und Wirtschaftsgeschichte», A. 4 (1896), p. 224-236; M. Ressel, Protestantische Händ-
lernetze cit., pp. 114-116.

Mediterranea – ricerche storiche – Anno XIX – Dicembre 2022
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)